iPhone 7 Plus vs Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Battle Roy

The iPhone 7 Plus is finally here amongst us! It brings with it a much improved camera setup with 2 camera sensors, one wide angle lens and one telephoto lens, a brighter and more vivid Retina HD display, dust and water resistance and much more.

How does it compare to Samsung’s latest and greatest, the Galaxy Note 7? Let’s find out!

Design
Apple’s latest spin on the iPhone rocks an aluminum body, much like the iPhone 6S.

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The ugly antenna lines are a thing of the past now with Integrated Antennas and the iPhone 7 also comes with a new ‘Jet Black’ finish that looks incredibly suave. Other colors on offer are the standard Gold, Silver, Rose Gold and another shade of black simply titles ‘Black’.

The design of the Note 7 on the other hand incorporates flourishes from both the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, with a curved back matching the curved display at the front.

Compared to the iPhone 7 Plus, the Galaxy Note 7 is much more compact as it has much smaller top and bottom bezels, and the edge to edge display really helps reduce the bulk. The iPhone 7 Plus on the other hand has an ace up its sleeve with the gorgeous Jet Black finish, which looks extremely sleek and suave.

Display
The iPhone 7 has a new Retina HD Display, which Apple promises is 25% brighter than the iPhone 6S’s display and has a wide color gamut, supporting Cinema P3 standard colors.

The Display of the Galaxy Note 7, in trademark Samsung fashion is a 5.7-inch Quad HD sAMOLED display with curved edges.

A bragging point is the fact that this is the first smartphone in the world whose display is protected by Gorilla Glass 5, which guarantees protection from shattering when dropped from a height of 5ft 80% of the time

Hardware
The iPhone 7 Plus comes with Apple’s new A10 fusion processor. It’s a quad-core setup that is said to be 40% faster than the A9 and two times faster than the A8 seen in the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6, respectively.

The GPU looks to triple the performance of the A8 and will be more battery-friendly than previous iterations.

The Galaxy Note 7 on the other hand comes with an Exynos 8890 octa-core processor, paired up with 4GB of RAM and a base storage of 64GB with microSD card support that allows you to further expand the internal memory by up to 256GB.

Cameras
The Camera on the iPhone 7 Plus has received a complete overhaul and now comes with a new 6-element lens, a wider aperture of f/1.8 that absorbs 50 per cent more light, and an all new high speed 12-megapixel sensor that is 60 per cent faster than the iPhone 6S.

The device also features a Quad-LED True Tone Flash, a flicker sensor and an Apple designed image signal processor that uses machine learning to look for bodies and objects in the image and then adjusts the photos by choosing the best exposure and white balance.

But what sets the iPhone 7 Plus camera apart is the fact that there is not only 1 camera, in fact, there are two! The above details are of the primary wide angle lens, but the device also comes with a secondary Telephoto lens. These two together dramatically improve Zoom capabilities on the iPhone 7 Plus.

With the dual camera setup, you get a 2X optical zoom plus a 10Z digital zoom, which Apple claims is better than digital zoom on most smartphones thanks to the second telephoto lens.

The dual camera setup allows for depth of field adjustment. The ISP scans the screen and uses machine learning to create a depth map of the image using the two lenses.

The Camera setup on the Galaxy Note 7 is exactly the same as the one found on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, which is not a bad thing, as the 12MP rear camera, and 5MP front camera are one of the best cameras on any smartphone to date. The rear camera is excellent for low-light photography and excels in well-lit situations.

Both cameras have an aperture of f/1.7 and the rear camera features Optical Image Stabilization and dual-pixel technology for faster autofocus in low light conditions

Dust and Water Resistance
Both the Galaxy Note 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus are dust and water resistance, with the latter being the first iPhone to come with this feature.

The Galaxy Note 7 has a slight edge over the iPhone 7 Plus here as the former is more waterproof (IP68 rating) than the latter (IP67)Extra Features
The Note 7 comes with a few features the iPhone 7 Plus lacks such as the S Pen and the Iris Scanner. On the other hand the iPhone 7 strikes back with 3D Touch and a new Taptic Engine.

S Pen
The S Pen on the Note 7 has a much smaller tip than before for precision writing and better control and the ability to recognize 4,096 different pressure levels. What is remarkable is the fact that in addition to the phone itself, Samsung has also made the S Pen water resistant, which allows for notes to be taken while the device is underwater!

The S pen is also now smarter and supports three new functions – GIF creation, zoom and translate.

Iris Scanner
The Note 7 also rocks an iris scanner on the front which can be used to unlock the device. The iris scanner was first introduced in the Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris , which was more of a business oriented tablet. In the Note 7, they have refined the Iris scanner and early reports suggest it works very quickly and flawlessly.

The iPhone 7 Plus also packs a few tricks up its sleeve:

Redesigned Home Button
Apple has redesigned the home button for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to improve the functionality. It’s now force-sensitive, and reinforced with the Taptic Engine – a new addition to the iPhone – which provides feedback on all kinds of user interaction.

3D Touch
The iPhone 7 Plus also comes with Apple’s 3D Touch. The iPhone 6S introduced a whole new way of interacting with your smartphone in the form of 3D Touch.

First introduced as force touch with the new Macbook back in early 2015, 3D touch allows users to go beyond the established multi-touch and long press, to introduce a third form of smartphone navigation.

Storage/Pricing
The Phone 7 Plus will cost $749 for the 32GB model, $849 for the 128GB model and $949 for the 256 GB model.

Yes! Apple has finally ditched the 16GB base model and has doubled the storage of all the other models as well. This move was long, long overdue.

Indian Pricing for the iPhone 7 Plus is not confirmed at the moment. The iPhone 7 is set to cost Rs 60,000 in India, so we can expect the iPhone 7 Plus to start around the Rs 68,000 range.

The Note 7 comes in just one model with 64GB of internal storage for Rs 59,990, but the internal storage can be expanded with a microSD card. This is a great feature for those who want to carry tons of media on their device and is something the iPhone 7 Plus lacks.

Before we end, we have to acknowledge the battery quality issues that have been plaguing the Note 7 and causing some of them to catch fire. Samsung is working on a fix for these and has postponed the Note 7’s release in India till they do so.

This should not take away from the fact that the Note 7 is a fantastic smartphone, and when it is released eventually, will make for a great competitor to the iPhone 7 Plus.